The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network has begun to accept the new Currency Transaction Reports and Suspicious Activity Reports electronically into FinCEN's BSA E-Filing System.

Credit unions without Internet access are exempt until March 31, 2013, but other credit unions and other financial institutions will need to begin to file the reports by July 1 of this year, FinCEN said Friday.

The center also said the new SARs will be able to accept attached spreadsheet files.

“The new SAR will accept a single, comma-separated value (CSV) attachment as part of the report,” FinCEN wrote in guidance about the electric filing. “The CSV is a standard Microsoft file format that aids in reporting tabular data into a file format. This capability allows an institution to include data (such as specific financial transactions and funds transfers or other analytics), which is more readable and usable in this format than it would be if otherwise included in the narrative.”